[ROOT GUIDE] Boost Mobile Samsung Galaxy S2

Whether you are new to root, or an old hat at it, following these simple steps will get you root access on your device. That means you're going to have access to the file system, system settings, be able to flash custom ROMs, get wifi tethering working, and all that good stuff.

I can confirm that this process worked for me and others on the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch running build FH29 of the Samsung software (you can see what build you are on by going to settings and about phone). I nor anyone else where will accept responsibility if your device ends up bricked. That shouldn't happen, but in the event that the stars align and the gods deign your device to be sacrificed, you're going to be SOL (because if you brick by rooting you are technically going to violate your warranty and may not be able to return it). Also, I accept no credit, I'm not worthy, I didn't make odin, kies, the kernel or the su zip -- that was all done by people a lot smarter than I.

Got all that? Good. Plug your phone into your PC and make sure that the drivers are all installed and that your PC can recognize your phone.

Unplug your phone and pull the battery. Put the battery back in and hold Vol - and Power at the same time and release when you see the SGS2 logo. Then you should get a screen warning you about the evils of custom operating systems -- hit Vol + to continue and plug your device into your computer (note for all the newbs: this is what is referred to as booting into download or odin mode).

Open Odin back up and it should recognize your phone (you should get like a yellow window on the left side). Hit the PDA box and select the AGAT kernel you downloaded. Make sure that it is in the PDA box (that's important) and not another one. Also the only other boxes that should be checked are auto reboot and reset time. Check to make sure all of the foregoing matches up, then check it a second time. Screwing something up with odin and and will mess up your shiny new phone. Hit start and it should go through the process of flashing the kernel to your device.

When that's done, disconnect your device, pull the battery again. This time, boot by pressing Vol + and power -- this will get you into the custom recovery that was flashed along with the kernel (and once more for the newbs, this is booting into recovery mode). Choose mount usb storage and move the superuser binary over to the sd card. Then go to the main menu of the recovery, select install zip, then install from sd card (external) and select the super user binary zip file and flash it. This will install superuser on your device. Then reboot like normal.

You should see a yellow triangle on your boot screen -- this is normal. This basically tips off Samsung or whoever that you have flashed something over Odin via a PC. I can confirm that triangle away in the play store removed it from my device, but your mileage may vary.

When your device boots, you should now have root access. Make sure that the Superuser program is installed, and you should be all set. You're ready to flash other kernels, custom ROMs, etc. At this point I would STRONGLY ADVISE you to reboot into recovery (vol + and power) and make what is called a nandroid (a backup of your device) -- just go into backup and restore in recovery and hit backup. Then when that is done, copy the nandroid to your PC so that you have everything backed up in case you need it. You should always do this before flashing anything, that way you have a way to possibly revert back if something goes bad.

That should be it! A couple of final pointers:

I would also advise investing in the program "Titanium Backup" in the market. This will allow you to backup and restore apps selectively, and best practice is to make a full titanium backup of all your apps and settings in addition to the nandroid backups. Never hurts to be safe.

Finally, if for whatever reason you need to go back to stock, or you don't want to be rooted anymore, there is a way to do it! Just grab the stock rom here (courtesy of Mark112887), unzip it and extract the tar.md5 file. Open up odin and flash the tar.md5 just like you flashed the AGAT kernel. It will take longer, but when you reboot your phone should be just like it was when you got it from Boost.

Edit: I can confirm that this process also works for FI22 and FL24. It should also work for any TW build, though you may want to grab the corresponding kernel here (i.e., if you're running a JB stock rom, make sure you get a JB kernel). I would also mention that, if you have 4g service, most custom kernels will bork your 4g speeds. You're only going to get 4g speeds with stock kernels or AGATs repacks (which are on the linked page). The repacks are just stock kernels with custom recovery that will leave your 4g speeds alone. So if you want fast 4g speeds, get a repacked kernel. If you don't have 4g or don't care about speed on it, you can get any compatible kernel you want.

But, as noted above, if something screws up or isn't working right, just flash back to stock and try again.

Out of curiosity, do you know if this would prevent OTA updates down the road? I'm only asking because, according to Techcrunch, Samsung has officially announce that the S2 will be receiving a Jelly Bean update. I'd love to move up to that. Personally, my only real reason for rooting is for tethering.

Out of curiosity, do you know if this would prevent OTA updates down the road? I'm only asking because, according to Techcrunch, Samsung has officially announce that the S2 will be receiving a Jelly Bean update. I'd love to move up to that. Personally, my only real reason for rooting is for tethering.

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Don't know -- I know on the EVO updates would only flash correctly with stock recovery installed. Worse case scenario though, even if rooting meant you coudln't update, just flash the md5.tar stock rom in the OP and that will get you right back to stock so you can update if and when we get an official JB release.

1. is it possible that there's going to be a way to root this phone (Original Boost Mobile GS2, FH29) without having to flash a kernel at all? I know there's nothing out yet, but, will be?

2. If not, after flashing the Agat kernel and rooting the phone, does anyone have the original one to flash it back again? (I'm not talking about the whole system, just the original system recovery <3e>, the one that Agat replaces)

For whoever is interested:
If you want to reset the flash counter and the yellow triangle in Boost Mobile GS2 FH29 this app worked for me perfectly, it's called: [root] Triangle Away, by Chainfire.
It's not free, I think it was like $4.

Again, IT WORKED FOR ME, if it does NOT work for you and your phone bricks it's not my problem, sorry.

I selected the link but I'm not sure which Kernal to download. There are many versions do I choose the very first one which in my head might be the latest? Also the ODIN link does not work. It says web page unavailable.

For whoever is interested:
If you want to reset the flash counter and the yellow triangle in Boost Mobile GS2 FH29 this app worked for me perfectly, it's called: [root] Triangle Away, by Chainfire.
It's not free, I think it was like $4.

Again, IT WORKED FOR ME, if it does NOT work for you and your phone bricks it's not my problem, sorry.

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What? What does the Yellow Triangle mean? What does it do? Is it friendly?

1. is it possible that there's going to be a way to root this phone (Original Boost Mobile GS2, FH29) without having to flash a kernel at all? I know there's nothing out yet, but, will be?

2. If not, after flashing the Agat kernel and rooting the phone, does anyone have the original one to flash it back again? (I'm not talking about the whole system, just the original system recovery <3e>, the one that Agat replaces)

Thanks

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I suppose anything is possible. If that were the case then I'm guessing it would be a su script flashable through stock recovery, like an update.zip. But I haven't seen anything like that.

And yeah, if you download the tar.md5, rename it to a rar, open it up then the original kernel is in there -- it's the zimage file.

I selected the link but I'm not sure which Kernal to download. There are many versions do I choose the very first one which in my head might be the latest? Also the ODIN link does not work. It says web page unavailable.

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Just download the latest one by checking the version numbers. The latest right now is .5.4.

I just tried the link myself and it came up fine for me. Maybe the site was down when you tried it but it should be good now.

The consesus is the triangle is a tipoff that the fone has been altered from factory status. Doesn't mean the fone is harmed, just a new ROM or something was loaded.

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Yeah, it doesn't mean that anything is screwed up with the phone or that you did anything wrong. The phone just keeps a count of how many times something has been flashed via odin on your pc. It's kind of like the labels that say warranty void if removed over screws you need to take out to open something up. It just lets them know that you've broken the seal so to speak.

Triangle away in the play store has worked for me and others to reset the counter. Also, the stock rom in the OP will reset it too even if you flash via odin.

I've actually never extracted a kernel from a rom and flashed the zimage. I think you can do it via heimdall using heimdall flash --kernel zimage but I'd probably look around for a bit.

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Jmmm ok, no big deal right now, the thing that bothers me is that I think we are all using parts of a method of a Sprint GS2 flashed to Boost Mobile... Which works anyway but there should be a way to just flash root in a more traditional way, like for example what you mentioned before: a zip file with SU/busybox and that's it.
Now... I tried flashing the Zip file (that everyone is using) under the stock recovery, but that gives an error... I wonder if someone can modify that to make it work without the need of flashing AGAT or any other recovery...

By the way, and as a general question... Isn't CWM better than AGAT? (I'm asking this because I've never heard of AGAT) In that case which CWM should we be using?

I'm sort of interested in rooting my phone but first I wanted to ask a few things. I've never rooted a phone or had any experience with it so I'm pretty new to this.

The only reason why I would want to root my phone would be to delete some applications that came with the phone. Ones that I don't use. Ones that keep opening back up after I have tried to close them. It seems like there are all these applications running that I don't start or use.

I have the Go Power Master app + widget. One tap of a button and it closes 30+ apps. If I do it again later, it closes that many more again, so I assume that a lot of apps are just re-running on its own.

Could all of these apps be a reason why battery life drains quickly? Would rooting the phone help that, or would it not really affect that at all?

Also is there some kind of list of everything that can be deleted without hurting the phone?

Thanks for any help/insight. Sorry if I've asked anything that's been asked time and time again.

Jmmm ok, no big deal right now, the thing that bothers me is that I think we are all using parts of a method of a Sprint GS2 flashed to Boost Mobile... Which works anyway but there should be a way to just flash root in a more traditional way, like for example what you mentioned before: a zip file with SU/busybox and that's it.
Now... I tried flashing the Zip file (that everyone is using) under the stock recovery, but that gives an error... I wonder if someone can modify that to make it work without the need of flashing AGAT or any other recovery...

By the way, and as a general question... Isn't CWM better than AGAT? (I'm asking this because I've never heard of AGAT) In that case which CWM should we be using?

Click to expand...

I think AGAT is based on CWM. They're the same thing basically AFAIK, but you can check the thread at XDA if you'd like.

I'm sort of interested in rooting my phone but first I wanted to ask a few things. I've never rooted a phone or had any experience with it so I'm pretty new to this.

The only reason why I would want to root my phone would be to delete some applications that came with the phone. Ones that I don't use. Ones that keep opening back up after I have tried to close them. It seems like there are all these applications running that I don't start or use.

I have the Go Power Master app + widget. One tap of a button and it closes 30+ apps. If I do it again later, it closes that many more again, so I assume that a lot of apps are just re-running on its own.

Could all of these apps be a reason why battery life drains quickly? Would rooting the phone help that, or would it not really affect that at all?

Also is there some kind of list of everything that can be deleted without hurting the phone?

Thanks for any help/insight. Sorry if I've asked anything that's been asked time and time again.

Click to expand...

Stock apps and bloat could contribute to battery drain -- could be a number of things. One of the benefits of rooting and roms and custom kernels and all that jazz is undervolting. Undervolting reduces the voltages delivered to the cpu while maintaining clock speed -- meaning you don't get much if any drop in performance while also saving battery. Also custom kernels and roms can be built on battery life. I'm running a jellybean rom right now which are notorious for bad battery life on our phones right now, but I'm getting better than I got with stock.

I don't know what apps can be deleted on the stock rom without busting it, but once you root make sure to do a nandroid and then keep that someplace safe. You can restore if you break anything. If something really goes wrong, you can always just flash back to complete stock.

Well I'm doing it now, but Odin says SetUpConnection and is taking awfully long to finish. It's Grayed out and will do nothing more. Also I downlaoded everything else, like Super User so what am I supposed to do with it? Drag and drop in Odin or something? And the Kies. I didn't realize I had to run it cuz it was doing everything by itself. Now it's taking forever to connect...Did I do something wrong already?